For security and other reasons, a modulated carrier signal may be subject to spread spectrum modulation. A spread spectrum signal is spread over a wide bandwidth and is relatively immune to eavesdropping and jamming. One technique uses a pseudo-random (PN) code sequence to obtain the desired spectral spreading. A PN sequence is a binary sequence that repeats itself after a large number of cycles. Thus, the binary numbers in the sequence are not truly random, but if the repetition cycle of the sequence is long enough its spectrum shares many of the properties of random electromagnetic noise. In the context of a data transmitter, PN modulation may be applied to a modulated carrier signal by simply passing the data stream and the PN code sequence through an exclusive OR gate, to achieve phase shift key (PSK) modulation of the data onto the PN code. Data bits are either inverted or not, depending on the presence or absence of a logical “1” bit in the PN code. The data symbol rate is typically many times slower than the PN code rate (referred to as the PN “chip” rate). The resulting digital data stream is a PN code modulated by the slower data symbol stream and is used to modulate a carrier signal in accordance with a digital modulation technique, such as PSK. The modulated carrier can then be transmitted.
In order to recover the data from the spread spectrum signal described above, two steps must occur. First, the PN code of the transmitted signal must be correlated with the matching, locally generated PN codes at the receiver. Second, the digital receiver needs to have its demodulator synchronized to the digital symbol transitions of the transmitted data symbol stream in order to achieve optimum demodulation.
PN code correlation can take twice as long when the demodulator symbol alignment is not synchronized to the transmitted data. This is caused by the fact that if the symbol alignment is off by 50% then every time there is a transition in the data that symbol will accumulate zero energy. However, symbol synchronization cannot typically be accomplished until the PN code has been correlated. It is greatly desired to have a faster method for obtaining PN correlation and symbol synchronization with a spread spectrum signal.